Mila Santos Is (Not) Dead

xii: one way out

MILA SANTOS: Hey, you dumbfucks. If you're looking for tragedy, for once, you've come to the wrong place. I'm Mila, my cameraman's Malachi, and we're into some macabre shit. Today, I'm gonna be telling all you sick bastards about the unsolved disappearance of a college freshman, Claire Baumgartner, who might have gotten a happy ending...

Mila's mom frowned and paused the video, looking at Mila and Malachi as they sat on her living room couch in their Halloween costumes. Naturally, Mila was Lizzie Borden. She'd made the costume herself—spent the last year hunting down a properly old-timey dress and heeled leather boots at various thrift stores. She'd splattered the costume with fake blood, gotten a plastic axe she'd coated in the stuff. Becca had given her a fancy up-do earlier that day. Malachi's costume was store-bought. He was a plague doctor, with a long black tunic, tall black hat, and a pointed white mask. They were both Like That, I don't know what else to tell you. Mila's mom hadn't dressed up, but Cruz had. He was a velociraptor princess. He'd picked out the velociraptor costume himself, then topped it with a sparkly pink tiara and tutu.

"Meelie said a no-no word!" Cruz sang, grabbing fistfuls of candy from the cauldron Mila and Malachi were going to use to pass out candy and shoving them in his own bag. "Meelie said a no-no word!"

"That's right. She did." Her mom nodded at Cruz and turned her attention to Mila. "Why do you swear so much in your videos? It makes you sound aggressive. It's off-putting."

"I am aggressive," Mila replied. "It's good they know."

Malachi sat there in his plague doctor costume and straight vibed out.

Mila's mom's frown deepened. She tapped her foot. "Why would there be a happy ending? She's still missing, isn't she?"

"You just need to watch and you'll find out!" Mila urged.

"NO!" Cruz yelled, grabbing hold of Mila's mom's hand and tugging on it. "It's already trick-or-treat!"

"But it's only ten minutes," Mila told Cruz.

"Ten minutes less of candy!" he argued.

Her mom rubbed her forehead and slid her phone in her pocket. "Just tell me what happens. Quick. So I can comment." Every video Mila and Malachi posted, she was first view, first like, first comment.

"Fine." Mila pouted. "So everyone thinks she faked her death to get away from an abusive relationship. Boom. Happy ending."

"An abusive relationship?" Her mom questioned. "Was it a boyfriend?"

Mila nodded. "Twenty years older than her."

"Honey, I've watched enough of your videos to know the boyfriend always did it. Especially if he was abusive and older. There's no way she—"

Cruz threw his whole body into pulling on his aunt's hand. "Come on! We're going to miss trick-or-treat!"

She sighed and let him drag her out the door. "Be safe, kiddos!" She called over her shoulder. "Don't party too hard!"

Mila rolled her eyes and sank into the couch. She and Malachi had plans of doing the exact opposite of partying: bingeing Halloween movies they'd already seen a thousand times before while passing out candy to the kids in her apartment complex. "So what movie do you wanna watch first? I'm thinking Hocus Pocus." She was always thinking Hocus Pocus. But her mind was elsewhere, on the video likely still queued up on her mom's phone, on what happened to Claire Baumgartner...

"Okay." Malachi slowly turned to face Mila, trying to pull some dramatics out of his ridiculous mask.

Mila tilted her head into her shoulder. "How can you stand having that mask on? It's driving me crazy just looking at it."